The National Archives of Australia is the archive of the Commonwealth government of Australia, and our records about people primarily relate to assisted migration, passenger arrivals and departures, naturalisation/citizenship, defence service –ways in which the individual interacted with the Commonwealth government.

The National Archives doesn’t have births, deaths or marriages information – this information is held by State governments in the BDM registries. You can find a list of Australian BDM registries athttp://australia.gov.au/topics/law-and-justice/births-deaths-and-marriages-registries. You will need to know where Andrew Hummel lived as any records relating to marriage, death or birth of any children will be held in the state where the birth/death/marriage occurred.

A place where you could start to look for information about Andrew Hummel iswww.ancestorsonboard.com. This is an index of all passengers departing the UK from between 1890 and 1960. From this site you should be able to identify when he left the UK and his destination port in Australia. Migrants often settled in the state in which they arrived.

Once you have found his outward passage, the National Archives will be able to help you find a record of his arrival in Australia (we need as much information as possible about when he left the UK or when he arrived in Australia). You can request a passenger arrival record using the online form athttp://reftracker.naa.gov.au/reft100.aspx?key=02PassRef. If you think Andrew became a naturalised Australian, we may have his application for naturalisation – you can request this online using the formhttp://reftracker.naa.gov.au/reft100.aspx?key=03ImmiRef. I wasn’t able to find a defence service record for Andrew (we have these all listed on our RecordSearch database).